absolution
by fall from stars
Summary: ONESHOT—In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things. [Demyx]


**A/N: **Not wanting to do homework + Muse's "Sing For Absolution" + Catholicism + guilt complexes + _Hunchback of Notre Dame _+ a good dosage of funtime crack makes this. Enjoy.

**Absolution**

Paris is burning around him, the Shadows swim alongside the Dusks on the cathedral floor, making their way through priceless glass and antique paintings. Darkness has come to Paris this night and no curse can keep it away, you cannot tell this darkness to get behind you and stand alongside Satan. Garlic and stakes won't help you, drop that prayer book; nothing will help you unless you have the key and of course nobody has it here in Paris, in a city full of teeming souls and sewer beds and underground miracle courts. Black magic or white prayer, whatever you ally yourself with will fail you tonight, my dear.

And while the water dances around him and the hearts he can't have float up and away into darkness, all he can think about is how there's nothing that will ever make him holy again. He's falling from grace, he's fallen already, he's taken up with the organized black coats and nobody's going to be handing out indulgences to the likes of him. He's got nothing to pay with, anyway. Guilt doesn't line the bishops' hats; it's braided gilded gold that keeps their bellies and coin pouches fat, it's everything he's been trying to find that he can't see yet.

There's nowhere to hide and there's no one to confide in. His thoughts are getting the best of him all the while he longs for just one more kiss, just one more kiss that he's dreamed of.

One of them, one of the hiding faithful is a boy, a small one, fair and flawless, and he shrinks back away from Demyx's hands, from Demyx's invitation to live a little longer. Shadows and Dusks holds him down in the ornate crystal baptismal font instead, plunge his head under and fill him with water from blessed rivers.

In the distorted marble reflection the boy's blue eyes go wide, the lips are blue from lack of oxygen, his heart floats up and away. The Shadow scurries after it, hopeless helpless thing, and the boy falls out of the baptismal font, stolen-lost-gone, and Demyx tries not to move, tries not to pick him up, tries not to think because—

_my god, i am sorry for my sins_

Because he can do it, he can resist anything, he can resist anything but temptation, he's strong but not that strong, he's trying to be sorry, but…

_with all my heart_

He's not picking up the boy, he's not, the lips are puckered and it's more than dead weight in his arms.

_in choosing to do wrong_

He's not trying to pretend the boy is still alive. He's not trying to pretend that those eyes are warm and alive when they're really cold and dead.

He's not kissing the boy, he's not.

_and failing to do good_

Oh, he's going to hell, he is, he is. He isn't shoving his tongue past those blue blue lips, he isn't pressing the boy's chest to his own, he's not revelling in their absent heartbeats, he's not. He's not holding on tight to him, he's not trying to pretend that boy is the one he lost.

_i have sinned against you_

The one he thought he lost years ago, the boy, the boy from the islands they called—

_whom i should love above all things_

The name he can't remember, the name he won't remember because it hurts too much, the name he should remember but doesn't, oh God, he's sorry, he's so sorry but—  
_  
i firmly intend with your help_

He can't help it. The memory's too embedded, it's one of the few things he really remembers, remembers from before, he really remembers, still remembers Tidus, he still remembers—

_to do penance_

Still remembers Tidus even if he sings for absolution, he only dreams of Tidus, his beautiful Tidus, even if he sings to be forgiven of his sin, of loving Tidus—

_to sin no more_

Of killing him, asphyxiating Tidus in the ocean because, because—

_and to avoid_

He had no choice and the Shadows would have taken him and destroyed him, they would. It was easier, it was better to preserve the memory while he could still see it, to press a kiss to Tidus' dead blue lips, a kiss that could never be redone, to take him before the darkness could take him.

_whatever leads me to_

Even if now all he thinks about is Tidus and what they did and what he did to him and how it was, how it was everything but nothing and he's condemned and he will burn in hell, he will, he will. It doesn't matter, there's not enough fire to quench Hell (remember, remember), even if it feels right, that doesn't matter because he's a sinner, he's addicted to the taste of dead wet lips, he's—

_sin_

He will never be holy again, no matter how many times he sings for absolution.

_in the name of the father and the son and of the holy spirit_

He vanishes. Falls, falls into drowning darkness.

_amen_

He forgets to put out the fires.

---


End file.
